PETN is a chemical component in plastic explosives.
Traces were found on wreckage from TWA flight 800 that crashed 7/17/96.
PETN is found in many bombs and surface-to-air missiles.
Precursor chemicals for nerve agent VX include phosphorous trichloride, phosphorous pentasulfide, diisopropyl ethylamine, and ethyl methylphosphonothionate, known as EMPTA.
EMPTA traces were found in soil outside Khartoum, Sudan's Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries Company, target of a 1998 US air strike.
EMPTA was found in the blood of a man killed by VX in a 1994 attack by a Japanese cult.
EMPTA has no industrial uses although scientific papers theorize use in fungicides and anti-microbial agents.
EMPTA breaks down into EMPA.
Aldrich Chemical Co. in Milwaukee makes EMPTA and sells it for research.
Mobil Corp. and International Chemical Industries of America researched commercial applications for EMPTA.
The Dutch banned a shipment of "dual-use" chemicals to Sudan in 1998.
The French found VX chemical components on Iraqi warheads.
Baghdad claimed it once had sufficient chemicals to make 500 tons of VX.
CH3POC12 can be used to make sarin and other chemical agents.
Thirty tons was taken from a chemical plant in Mostar, Bosnia in 1992.
The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, ratified by the US and the Soviet Union but not Sudan or Yugoslavia, bans development, production, stockpiling, transfer and use of chemical weapons.
A 1985 law requires destruction of deadly chemical agents.
Monitors include the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, UN weapons experts, and Human Rights Watch.
